Ethical Hacking Tutorial

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Hacking generally refers to technical effort for manipulating the behaviour of the network connections and connected systems. At first, the hacking took place in 1960’s with MIT students coming up with some findings in the computing process.

In this article, we are going to explore the below-mentioned topics related to Ethical Hacking:

What is Ethical Hacking?

Hacking is carried out to gain access to the computer system or related computer network with the loopholes existing & read all the private data or sensitive data existing in it! Hacking a system to find the loopholes or weakness of the system or network used for computer with legal permissions is called as “Ethical Hacking”.

Is Ethical Hacking a Cybercrime?

Ethical hacking cannot be considered as a cybercrime unless the hacker disobeys the rules & does not follow the code of ethics agreement. Typically, hacking refers to gaining computer/network access without the permission of the concerned person or organization and lead to unlawful review of data, theft & file destruction. The entire process violates both federal & state laws. At the federal level, FBI investigates the hacker, and, at state level, we have several law enforcements for investigating the hacker. The precise crime depends on the individual who commits the crime, based on

What system is Hacked.

What information is accessed.

For what purpose the information is used after accessing.

Based on the threat for the host.

What is Cybercrime?

Cybercrime is defined as a crime where in a computer system is used as tool for committing the offence. Cybercrime includes accessing your personal information, confidential data or disabling your device. Below mentioned are few category based cybercrimes.

Categories:

Property

Individual

Government

Types of Cybercrimes:

Botnets

DDoS Attacks

Identity Theft

Social Engineering

Cyberstalking

Phishing Attacks

PUPs

Online Scams

Illegal Content

Exploit Kits

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Legal Issues of Ethical Hacking

The legal issues include the personal or confidential information of the firm or organization being revealed by the hacker to the competitor or outsider. In such cases, legal actions will be taken on the hacker, if proven guilty.

An ethical hacker can negatively affect a firm by committing errors at the organization level. During this scenario, the company can sue the ethical hacker. He/she can be at legal risk if not properly taken care or protection.

Code Of Ethics / Rules For Ethical Hacking

Before ethical hacking is carried out, the firm/organization needs to have a look & understand its work process business, network & system which helps in safeguarding the sensitive information like confidential data, legal information.

Do follow the rules & regulations in handling the sensitive financial, personal, organization information & determine the sensitivity of the information.

During the process of ethical hacking, maintain transparency with the client. Let the clients know all the information related to network & systems on their side. It enables the client to react accordingly to enable security of the network or system.

Do follow the limits set by the clients during the process of ethical hacking. It is possible for an ethical hacker to access the data beyond the targeted areas. This helps in building trust between the ethical hacker and the client. Ensure all the information is lead by a step by step process.

After the process of ethical hacking, never disclose information to any other clients. Ethical hacking is performed to ensure the security of network & system security flaws. It may also lead to legal issues.

Types of Hackers

We have different types of Ethical Hackers. Few of them are discussed below:

White Hat Hacker - These hackers are also called as ethical hackers as they perform penetration testing at organization level & identify the bugs in security. They work on various methods to ensure protection from black hat hackers & few malicious cybercrimes.

Black Hat Hacker - These hackers take negative persona of hacking. They are the culprits. The agenda of a black hat hacker is money all over the time. They look for loopholes in the network and systems. Using these loopholes, they can access the data and post virus or worms in your systems.

Grey Hat Hacker - These hackers are as a thin line between Black hat and White hat Hackers as they do not work for their personal profit. They hack into organizations and find vulnerabilities and a leak over the internet or intimate the same to the firm owners. Let me explain this. A grey hat hacker may not use his hacking expertise for personal profit and can not be defined as black hat hacker. Where as he can not hack organizations data as he is not authorised as ethical hacker.

Script Kiddies - They are the hackers who don’t have much coding skills. They usually use tools or predefined codes by the developers and hackers. Their intention is to impress others or friends. They do not bother about the nature of attack and use off the shelves code for hacking. They often involve mostly in DDoS and DoS attacks.

Green Hat Hacker - These hackers are very curious to learn. We consider themselves as script kiddies, as the thin line which separates them is the desire of learning. These newbies has full desire to become one of the full-brown hackers. You can identify them within hacking communities as they engross the fellow member in the community. We can easily identify one of those by their zeal to learn the latest hacking trades.

Blue Hat Hacker - These hackers aim is to take revenge on people who make them angry. These are to be considered as script kiddies and their intention will be taking revenge with no desire to learn hacking by using simple attacks like IP overload with packets, which leads to (Dick Operating System) attacks. Blue hat hacker is considered as script kiddie, who has revenge nature.

Red Hat Hacker - These hackers are same as white hat hackers in performance and ethics. They halt black hat hackers in performing their duties. There is lot of difference in their operation. They will be ruthless when they trade with black hat hackers. They think in attacking black hat hackers and take them down completely instead of reporting. They implement a pack of attacks on black hat hackers which, in return, leads to whole system recovery.

Hacktivist - These are a group of hackers with an intention to make social changes, and they believe it strongly. They often hack govt organizations to prove that they exist and share their intentions and thoughts.

Phreaker - These hackers are mostly called as telecommunication hackers. They are very active in cloning the phone, network mimicry, blue hacking, and other forms of cellular hacks.

Stages Of Hacking

The below steps explain the different stages of hacking.

Stage 1 - Reconnaissance: It is the act of gathering information related to intelligence and preliminary data of your target to plan for attack in a better way. It can be carried out either actively or passively(Network, IP address, DNS records). Hacker will be spending his most of time in this stage.

Stage 2 - Scanning: It is a prior stage to launching the attack. At this stage we scan for open ports, services etc. The tools collectively used by the hacker during the scanning would be port scanners, sweepers, dialers, and vulnerability scanners.

Stage 3 - Gaining Access: The blueprint of network of the targeted system will be ready from stages 1 & 2. At this stage we gain access for the targeted system by accessing one/more network devices to extract the data from target.

Stage 4 - Maintain Access: At this stage, the hacker will be in stealth mode to avoid getting caught while working in host environment. Once the hacker gains access, he lays path for future attacks and exploitations by making the target hardened. Hacker also secures the path by any other bypass accessing with rootkits, backdoors and trojans.

Platforms Used In Ethical Hacking

In the cyber world, security-focused OS is the hackers’ best friend as it leads them to detect weakness in the systems or networks. The basic tool for hacking a system for hacker is the OS. Usually, the specializations in hacking are dependent on Linux Kernel and are regarded as the advanced working systems. Below compiled are few top platforms for Ethical Hacking.

Kali Linux

It is based on Debian-Linux Distribution.

Designed for forensic and penetration testing.

It comes with 300 pre-installed penetration programs.

Supports both 32 and 64 bit.

Key Features:

Combines with 600+ penetration testing tools.

Free and Open Source.

Kali Linux as FHS.

Every package of it was GPG signed.

Latest Version: Kali Linux 2016.2(32/64 bit).

BackBox

It is Ubuntu based Linux Distribution.

The objective of this is fast, easy operable and use minimal environment.

Its repositories are updated at regular intervals.

It consists of 70+ tools for tasks ranging from network and web analysis.

Key Features:

It supports cloud for penetration testing.

Fully automated and non-intrusive.

Supports XFCE desktop.

It is completely hacker-friendly.

Latest Version: 4.7

Parrot Security OS

It is based on Debian GNU/Linux.

It uses kali repositories for package updates.

is highly customizable.

Key Features:

Highly customisable for the kernel version 4.5.

Have custom anti-forensic tools for it.

It supports Falcon 1 PL.

Special cloud designed for servers, contains less-weight OS.

Latest Version: 3.3

DEFT Linux

It is based on GNU Linux and DART.

It is specially designed for forensics tasks.

It consists of 100+ forensic and hacking tools.

It is actively used by EH.

Key Features:

It is based on lubuntu distribution.

It supports Bitlocker scripts, iOS and Android.

Contains Digital Forensic Applications.

Latest Version: 8.2

Samurai Web Testing Framework

It comprises of web apps and exploitation tools.

It provides Live linux Platform to run VMs for penetration testing.

It is based on Ubuntu 9.04.

Key Features:

It contains several tools for discovery, mapping, etc.

It is equipped with SVN for providing security tools.

Latest Version: 3.3.2

Network Security Toolkit(NST)

It is a live bootable DVD/USB Flash drive based on Fedora.

It provides network/sys administrators with a set of open-source security tools.

What is Encryption Hacking?

Encryption helps in accessing unauthorised data with emails, bank details etc, as keeping secure communication between the two parties involved. This can be done via “Scrambling” the data sent from one to other person as lengthy code by making it unreadable who ever tries to access it.

In the data encryption the receiver and the sender parties only can Decrypt the data scrambled into a readable content. This can be achieved by “Keys”, which provides access to make the data Readable and Unreadable.

How To Break Encryptions?

Today, criminals and hackers find new ways in “Cracking” encrypted documents by finding loops in encrypted algorithms. That is how they can find out the necessary key used for reading the information in the plain text.

There are other ways in earlier days where they simply test with all the possible keys provided. But, now a days, it is performed by the computers which are capable of calculating billions of keys/second, and this method is called as “Brute Force.”

How To Bypass Encryption?

In encryption, we use complicated mathematical equations for hiding the information. In general, encrypted files require a key to decrypt the data or information. But, in few cases, hacker can bypass the encryption for stealing the data. By few ways, we can encounter these techniques. The ways are stated below.

Key Theft

Password Security

Hashing

Weak Encryption

Key Theft

The perfect way to bypass encryption is to steal the key simply. If a hacker can insert a keylogger in our system, he will read all necessary activities by recording. The best way to protect ourselves by updating the anti-malware programs regularly.

Password Security

A hacker can hash common passwords and look for matches in DB. The algorithms that convert these passwords are easier to identify. For preventing these type of attacks, we need to use complex passwords that are not available in the dictionary.

Hashing

Hashing is commonly used by DB-servers, and is a cryptographic method. It is a straight cryptographic algorithm which provides unique string for each input. For example, when creating an account and password, server stores hash version of the data, and when logging in, it hashes the stored data and checks whether both of them are same or not for validation.

Weak Encryption:

In few cases, cryptographic security is also capable of securing brute force violation. Brute force violation needs to try every possible way to break into encrypted scheme and this takes a lot of time for succeeding. Probably, in many customer forms, encryptions use 128/256 bit keys.

Ethical Hacking Tools List

Few of the below-mentioned tools are effective and some of them are free of cost. These tools help in finding the loopholes of the software or computer systems or networks. Few of these are opensource as well.

Netsparker

It is a web app security scanner which automatically identifies SQL, XSS and other loops in web apps and services.

Probe.ly

It continuously scans the web apps for loops.

Acunetix

It is fully automated hacking solution which mimics ethical hacker to keep ahead of malicious attacks.

Burp Suite

It is a Security Testing tool for web apps.

Aircrack

It is used to crack wireless connections and powered by WPA 2 and WEP WPA.

Ettercap

It helps in dissection of network and host analysis of active and passives modes devices.

GFI LanGuard

It can be as a “Virtual Consultant” which scans network for vulnerabilities.

Angry IP Scanner

It is used to scan ports and IP addresses as it is a cross platform and open source tool.

QualysGuard

It helps to build security to digital transformations. It also helps in identifying cloud system vulnerabilities.

WebInspect

It is a dynamic app security testing tool.

Savvius

It identifies issues and decrease security risk along deep analysis provided through Omnipeek.

Hashcat

It is a password cracking tool for ethical hackers.

IKECrack

It is an authentication cracking tool.

SQLMap

It detects and exploits the SQL injection loopholes in the system.

Medusa

It is used to crack password. It is speedy and the best online ethical hacking tool.

NetStumbler

It is the tool to detect wireless router networks for Windows OS.

Cain and Abel

It is a password recovery tool for Microsoft OS.

RainbowCrack

It is the password hacking tool used by most of the ethical hackers.

L0phtCrack

It is the tool used to recover and audit the password for the systems.

IronWASP

It is fortware available online for free for ethical hacking and it is open source.

Top Ethical Hacking Techniques, What Are They?

Hackers use different types of techniques. The familiar ones are mentioned below.

Trojan Horse - It acts as backdoor for an intruder to gain access to the system.

Rootkit - It provides a set of programs to have control over OS with legitimate operators.

Keyloggers - Used to record each keystroke in the machine for collecting later.

Viruses - These are self-replicating executable programs by themselves into different files.

Pros and Cons Of Ethical Hacking

Features

Explanation

Pros

Experience

Requires experience to find the loopholes and log to security sys.

Focus on Security

Need to find loopholes in the security sys and report.

Consult To Make Improvements

Need to improvise and fight back on current threats.

Updated Security Sys

Need to make latest updates on security systems.

Cons

Illegal Background

Chances of making damages to the security system.

Unhappy Clients

Leads to termination if the clients are not satisfied with the hacker background.

Absence Of Faith

Absence of faith is another factor on former hacker to deal with our security systems.

Direct Approach To Security System

Need to have a look over the hacker who access your system as you are providing direct access to him/her.

Conclusion:

The persons who possess skills in “Ethical Hacking” are approached by big firms/organizations and will be provided with an opportunity to prove themselves as “Ethical Hackers”. Getting trained on “Ethical Hacking” improves your chances of getting job opportunities in top and leading firms/organizations. You can enroll for Mindmajix Ethical Hacking Training and acquire expertise in this field. This course will also enable you to get certified in Ethical Hacking. Happy reading!

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About The Author

Ravindra Savaram is a Content Lead at Mindmajix.com. His passion lies in writing articles on the most popular IT platforms including Machine learning, DevOps, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, RPA, Deep Learning, and so on. You can stay up to date on all these technologies by following him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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